Nigel Farage says the EU is a threat to NATO nations, RobinHoodUKIP via YouTube, December 14, 2016
Posted tagged ‘President Elect Trump’
Nigel Farage says the EU is a threat to NATO nations
December 15, 2016The worst-case scenario for the Electoral College vote
December 14, 2016The worst-case scenario for the Electoral College vote, Israel National News, Mark Langfan, December 14, 2016
Dear President-Elect Trump,
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
The best scenario is the Electoral College votes the 270 electors or more for you, and you take the oath of office on Inauguration Day. Great, wonderful.
And, what’s the worst? The worst is that under Obama’s artificial CIA claim that the Russians hacked us to win the election, Obama invokes martial law under NSPD-51. NSPD-51 is the worst. Google it. Or, google, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html.
What’s NSPD-51? It stands for “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51, HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20.” NSPD-51 is an executive order first signed by George Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks which “gave” the President of the United the authority to declare martial law. I put “gave” in quotes because it is only a Presidential Executive Order. It’s not a “law” or a “constitutional” provision, and it may no longer be valid. However, Obama re-upped NSPD-51, and apparently re-signed an expansive and secret version that was never really published in full.
NSPD-51, in essence, says the President can unilaterally declare martial law if he deems a “catastrophic emergency” has taken place. And “Catastrophic Emergency” means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions;”
Let’s boil this sentence down to its legal bare-bones: A “Catastrophic Emergency” means any incident, regardless of location, that results in . . . disruption severely affecting the U.S. population or government functions.
What was the real reason for the “leak” to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal of the “secret” CIA report that “concluded” that Russia, America’s greatest enemy, hacked into the DNC and fed the e-mails into the American media for 2 months before the election so as to win the election for Donald Trump. Just to capture a 24-hour news cycle? Maybe.
What if the CIA “Russian Hacking Wins for Trump” finding was released so as to lay a false “fake news” ‘factual’ predicate basis for Obama to invoke NSPD-51. If true, would such a cyber-war event constitute an “incident, regardless of location, that results in . . . disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, . . . or government functions?” The alleged Russian sneak cyber-attack caused greater “harm” to the United States than the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, they could claim. Forget the fact that the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency don’t agree with the CIA. Who knows what level of intelligence finding a President needs to invoke NSPD-51.
In short, instead of tweeting up a storm, I would be lawyering-up a storm to file preliminary injunctions against President Obama and the CIA to prevent any actions with respect to either the Electoral College or under NSPD-51.
Obama may not intend to watch his 8 years of work erased so easily.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Best regards,
Mark Langfan
Trump picked Tillerson for tough new Iran policy
December 14, 2016Trump picked Tillerson for tough new Iran policy, DEBKAfile, December 14, 2016
Rex Tillerson, Chairman an CEO of Exxon Mobil, was named this week as the next administration’s Secretary of State to execute the tough foreign policies charted by president-elect Donald Trump, including his decision to stiffen the nuclear accord signed with Iran as soon as he moves into the White House on Jan. 20.
DEBKAfile reports this exclusively from New York and its intelligence sources.
While campaigning for the presidency, Trump called the accord “the worst deal” ever.
According to our sources, a special team is already working on revisions of the accord which the US and five other global powers concluded with Iran in 2015 in the hope of retarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program by a decade.
As new president, Trump will issue Tehran with a unilateral demand to accept those revisions as pre-condition for the continuation of relations between the US and Iran. He does not intend consulting America’s co-signers, Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France, or asking them for their endorsement of the revamped accord.
The teams preparing the Trump administration’s Iran policy were put in place last week by Tillerson and designated national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
No members of the incumbent NSC, State Department, Pentagon or Treasury, who managed the Obama administration’s Iran policy, was invited to take part. The teams were instead chosen from among scientists, military leaders and intelligence officials who opposed the nuclear accord with Iran.
Also attached were former administration officials hired by Exxon for their extensive knowledge of Iran’s oil trade and their close ties with oil circles in the Gulf Emirates, which like Israel, fought hard to pre-empt the nuclear deal with Iran.
Our sources have also learned that if Iran rejects the revised accord, the president elect has a list of new economic sanctions drawn up which are a lot tougher than the sanctions regime imposed by the Bush and Obama administrations.
The incoming president will have a fight on his hands to get the Tillerson appointment through the Senate in the face of objections raised by Republican lawmakers over his ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, Trump hopes to turn those ties to his advantage. He trusts that Tillerson is just the man to sell the new administration’s Iran policies to the Russian president.
Read more about Trump’s plans for his secretary of state in the coming issue of DEBKA Weekly (for subscribers) out on Friday. Dec. 16, 2016.
Briefing the Electoral College on ‘Russian hacks’
December 14, 2016Briefing the Electoral College on ‘Russian hacks’, American Thinker, David Zukerman, December 14, 2016
Last week, writing for this blog about a faithless elector, I cited the passage from Federalist No. 68 (attributed to Alexander Hamilton) noting that the members of the Electoral College were bound by the Constitution to meet in their individual states. I had no idea that that very limitation would be relevant to the curious call by some electors for an intelligence briefing, a call endorsed by John Podesta, Clinton campaign chairman — as I learned from the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal, December 13.
For present purpose, I would call to the attention of Mr. Podesta and all Anti- and Never-Trumpers wherever they might be, the opening line of the Twelfth Amendment of the United States Constitution: “The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President….” Federalist No. 68 makes it clear that the aim of the Founders was to keep the lid on “tumult and disorder” at a convocation of the Electoral College. But a section of Federalist No. 68 that I did not think required quoting, previously, also makes it clear that the aim of the Founders, in keeping the members of the Electoral College confined to their separate states, was to reduce as much as humanly possible “cabal, intrigue, and corruption,” described in No. 68 as “[t]hese most deadly adversaries of republican government….”
How, then, would the proponents of intelligence briefings for the electors propose such briefings take place? Clearly, the spirit of the Twelfth Amendment would prevent an Electoral College briefing for all electors meeting in one place. Should there, then be briefings in the separate states, plus the District of Columbia? Who would conduct the briefings? Would intelligence briefings under the auspices of the national government be consistent with the state basis of the Electoral College? And wouldn’t all electors need to have security clearances for intelligence briefings? Surely, the briefings could not be held under the lax rules approach of the HIllary Clinton e-mails. Or would the briefings solely consist of readings from vague and unsubstantiated articles published in the Trump-resisting New York Times?
The moral I infer from all the commotion about the alleged (fake news?) shadow cast by Russia over the recent presidential campaign is simply this: never underestimate the left’s penchant for what Federalist No. 68 called “cabal, intrigue, and corruption” for purpose of undoing “republican [lower-case ‘r’] government.”
There is, also, an observation in Federalist No. 41 (attributed to James Madison) that seems worth noting in the present context: “A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.”
A Dumpster of Despicables
December 14, 2016A Dumpster of Despicables, PJ Media, David Solway, December 13, 2016
The situation in Canada, while not as dire as it is or has been in the U.S., is perhaps more dispiriting because we have no Donald Trump or Steve Bannon or Rudy Giuliani on the political horizon. Instead, we have the pro-Islamic, terrorist-hugging, debt-mongering, UNRWA-subsidizing, university drop-out, gynocentric, Castro-loving Justin Trudeau leading the country toward the proverbial cliff.
**************************
Hillary Clinton’s remark that Trump voters were a “basket of deplorables” has now entered the almanac of infamy, as she herself is in process of doing. I know many such deplorables in the rural Ontario community where I make my home: farmers, cattle breeders, shop keepers, machinists, marina operators, truck drivers, carpenters, house painters, restaurateurs, tradesmen, unpretentious people who vote conservative, who are reliable neighbors, and whose children are not afraid of honest work. (The children of deplorables must be deplorables, too, which renders Hillary’s slur even more unconscionable.) In fact, these kids are an impressive lot, many of them apprentices in their fathers’ businesses and many enrolled in music classes in the local schools or taking private lessons, perhaps to become budding graduates of Toby Keith’s Honky Tonk U.
So all in all, I’m delighted to be living in a hotbed of deplorables, good people who would have voted Trump had they been Americans. They are largely scornful of our preening nonentity PM Justin Trudeau and Ontario’s cadaverous Liberal premier, the stridently feminist, LGBTQ-boosting, pro-abortion, anti-family, cap-and-trade carbon taxer, self-promoting, donor-hungry, economically illiterate social justice warrior, and Hillary mini-me Kathleen Wynne, currently escorting Bill 28 through parliament. The bill redefines the family as a contractual rather than a natural institution, involving up to four adult “parents,” a logical extension of such rulings as the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges landmark case resulting in the legal redefinition of marriage.
Of course, Canada boasts a rapidly expanding doofus brigade, of which the majority of our politicos, our morally defective media, and our urban Liberals are charter members. We seem in this country, and particularly in this province—call it the SRO, the Socialist Republic of Ontario—to be approaching the condition that prevails in many parts of the U.S.
But we still have a ways to go to match the dumpster of despicables that currently flourishes there, including the aforementioned Hillary, the outgoing president and his administration of “old, plump, dull frauds” (to quote Bruce Walker), a media and academic sewer overflowing with cultural Marxist subversives, a student generation who would rewrite the American Constitution if they were able to compose a grammatical sentence, entitled minorities demanding reparations and government grants, left-liberal SocProgs, and a clan of plutocrats financing every seditious organization in sight. These are people who prove the point that you can have everything and have nothing. For if you have no historical awareness, no self-scrutiny, no strength of character, and no moral substance, then indeed you have nothing—except the power to wreak harm and convulse a nation. This is as good a definition of a “despicable” as I can come up with.
I imagine a photo of American despicables posing amiably together say, Hillary, Bill, John Podesta, George Soros, Barack Obama, Michael Moore and Harry Reid, to choose at random as depraved and injurious a group of political trash as one might find in the national dumpster. The dumpster is vast enough to contain a motley crew who adhere to a septicemic ideology that would transform the nation from a bread basket into a basket case by any means available, inculcating hatred of a long and reasonably successful republican tradition, generating contempt for the productive backbone of the country, spreading pervasive disinformation, and fomenting racial discord and acts of outright violence. The dumpster of despicables should be emptied as waste disposal via legislative measures and policy initiatives by an administration representing the real people, aka the basket of deplorables. One way or another, the despicables can no longer be allowed to manipulate the levers of power if the country is ever to get back on track.
The situation in Canada, while not as dire as it is or has been in the U.S., is perhaps more dispiriting because we have no Donald Trump or Steve Bannon or Rudy Giuliani on the political horizon. Instead, we have the pro-Islamic, terrorist-hugging, debt-mongering, UNRWA-subsidizing, university drop-out, gynocentric, Castro-loving Justin Trudeau leading the country toward the proverbial cliff.
Provincially we are no better off. Over the last several election cycles, featuring four successive Liberal governments under Dalton McGuinty—the Pinocchio of Canadian politics—and the hapless Wynne, Ontario has devolved from the manufacturing center and economic engine of the country into a have-not province, crushed under a gargantuan load of debt, bristling with dysfunctional and exorbitant wind turbines and collapsing under the highest energy bills in Canada—consumers are billed even for not using electricity—funding the costliest kangaroo court in the nation (the so-called Social Justice Tribunal), and dependent upon federal transfer payments to make ends not quite meet—California North. We are observing in our corner of the world what a Hillary presidency would have looked like, completing the devastation that Obama began. It takes a special despicable-type talent to drive a prosperous and stable province, state, or country into the ground.
The point was emphatically made by the just-released Ontario auditor general’s report, revealing the machinations of one of the most corrupt and incompetent provincial administrations in the history of the country. It reads like a Monty Python skit, depicting a government selling dead parrots to the electorate at prohibitive cost. Its tenders and oversight are so demented that a pedestrian bridge was built partly upside-down. Clearly, upside-down is what despicables do best.
There have always been secession movements percolating in Canada, most notably in Quebec, as well as in Alberta—as we also find in Texas. I would suggest it is high time for southern Ontario, where the deplorables flourish, to consider the option, as did many in pre-Trump Texas. If that is the only way to get rid of the dumpster of despicables, I would be all for it. The U.S. still has a chance under Trump. Canada has no chance under Trudeau nor does the SRO under the ridiculous and inept Kathleen Wynne. It’s time to start the clean-up.
Former ‘Al-Sharq Al-Awsat’ Editor ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed: ‘Which Muslims Are Against Trump?’
December 14, 2016Former ‘Al-Sharq Al-Awsat’ Editor ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed: ‘Which Muslims Are Against Trump?’ MEMRI, December 14, 2016
In his December 13, 2016 column in Al-Arabiya, titled “Which Muslims Are Against Trump?” senior Saudi journalist ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat and also former director of Al-Arabiya TV, expressed satisfaction that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is putting together an administration that is aware of the Iranian danger. It is “Iran, Al-Qaeda, and Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood” that object to Trump’s choice of top officials, and that seek to depict him as anti-Muslim, he wrote, adding that the Muslim Brotherhood was angered by Trump’s friendly stance towards Egyptian President Al-Sisi. He underlined that Trump’s national security advisor pick, Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn, is only saying “what we ourselves say – that there is a dangerous virus inside Islamic society called extremism.”
The following is his column, in the original English: [1]
Al-Rashed (source: Alarabiya.net)
“We must understand the motives behind the groups that launch incitement campaigns against the new American administration. Iran knows that two of the appointed generals know it through expertise and personal experience. ISIS knows that the phase of truce will end with President Barack Obama’s exit. The Muslim Brotherhood, which enjoyed Obama’s support and bet on Clinton’s election as president, is now before a new phase that may not be in its interest.
************************
“Extremist powers in our region have declared war against President-elect Donald Trump under the excuse that he has a project to fight Islam and Muslims. They are trying to incite around one billion Muslims against the new U.S. administration and against the U.S. Those performing this task are doing so through religious and media platforms affiliated with extremist Islamic parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime.
“Is Trump really hostile to Muslims in general? Do his secretaries of state [sic] really have hostile stances against Islam as a religion?
“Ever since Trump announced the appointments of major secretaries of state [sic], many in our region spoke out against them, claiming Washington was willing to launch war on one billion Muslims. General James Mattis, whom Trump chose as secretary of defense, has in fact clearly and frankly voiced hostility – but against terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda. He also has frank stances against what Iran is doing in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
“General Michael Flynn, Trump’s new national security advisor, has also made outspoken speeches against extremist Islamic groups. Many have used these speeches to indicate that he is hostile against Islam and Muslims. Truth be told, what General Flynn said is what we ourselves say, that there is a dangerous virus inside Islamic society called extremism that has killed Muslims and threatened them everywhere and harmed them more than it even harmed the West and followers of other religions.
“The ‘Dangerous Disease’
“Doesn’t this dangerous disease exist in Muslims’ societies across the world? It certainly exists. Look at what happened in Turkey and Egypt during the past few days and what had happened in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan. Hideous crimes were committed by extremist groups – the same ones which Flynn and Mattis call for confronting. Mike Pompeo, whom Trump chose to manage the most important foreign security institution, the CIA, has the same opinions about the necessity of confronting extremism and he’s aware of Iran’s sabotaging role in the region and the world.
“If we realize that those who are angered by these three appointments are Iran, Al-Qaeda, and Islamic groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, we can understand that the problem is not in Trump’s choices, but in these men’s project to confront terrorism which the former parties sponsor or at least benefit from. The majority of Islamic countries agree with these state secretaries’ proposals and vision of the crisis that threatens the entire world. We, as Muslims, have for a decade and half now been engaged in a war against extremism and extremists, as an ideology and groups, and want the world to differentiate between Muslims and not put them all in one category and to stand with the majority of peaceful Muslims against this evil minority. It’s in our interest to deter regimes like Iran that supports terrorist groups, be it Sunni or Shi’ite, and allies with them and engages in regional wars under dishonest slogans such as defending Islam or standing against the West.
“We understand that Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the elections angered the Muslim Brotherhood. What fueled the latter’s anger was how Trump received Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in New York earlier this year. It’s on this basis that they try to picture Trump’s administration as racist and as an enemy of Islam and Muslims. They want to establish a popular bloc that exerts pressure to confront the new American government in order to intimidate it and force it to alter its stances and they are doing so by entrenching themselves behind Islam and Muslims.
“Iran’s Leadership Of Extremists
“However, the Muslim Brotherhood must realize that we don’t agree with them and don’t care about their aspirations for power and don’t want to stand with them. At the same time, we support any government in the world that’s willing to ally with us against extremism and terrorism as this has always been our desire, even before Trump entered the political arena. These groups must realize the threat of media, political and religious incitation against Trump and the West and how it will cause new waves of violence under false justifications.
“For 40 years now, Iran has led extremist groups, whether armed or politicized or Sunni or Shiite, in Lebanon, Palestine and the Gulf, and it continues to do so. It’s currently guilty when it comes to Iraq and the sectarian chaos across it and it’s responsible for the rivers of blood in Syria. It’s for the first time that we see Washington officials who realize the facts on the ground and frankly declare that they will not accept blackmail or keep silent over extremist and terrorist regimes’ and groups’ practices.
“We must understand the motives behind the groups that launch incitement campaigns against the new American administration. Iran knows that two of the appointed generals know it through expertise and personal experience. ISIS knows that the phase of truce will end with President Barack Obama’s exit. The Muslim Brotherhood, which enjoyed Obama’s support and bet on Clinton’s election as president, is now before a new phase that may not be in its interest.
“These are the reasons behind the anger and quick judgments against the new American administration, and they reflect the stance of all three groups, i.e. Iran, ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, and those who sympathize with them. Meanwhile, the majority of Islamic countries will be very happy if he who arrives to the White House desires to fight extremism and terrorism.”
[1] English.alarabiya.net, December 13, 2016.
How President Trump Can Make American Intelligence Great Again
December 13, 2016How President Trump Can Make American Intelligence Great Again, Center for Security Policy, Fred Fleitz, December 12, 2016
(But please see, Abolish the CIA? Perhaps Trump’s CIA will be better than the old CIA.– DM)
Source: National Review
In 2010, when I was on the staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I attended a committee hearing on the North Korean nuclear program. That hearing epitomized the failure of post-9/11 reforms of U.S. intelligence and showed why the Trump administration must take aggressive steps to streamline American intelligence. Only then can it can return to being the great institution that provides the intelligence support our presidents need to protect our nation against national-security threats facing our nation today.
This process should start by sharply scaling back or eliminating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
The lead witness at this hearing, seated at the center of a long witness table, was the ODNI North Korea issue manager. Seated next to him on each side were the ODNI issue manager for WMD proliferation and the director of the ODNI National Counterproliferation Center.
Joining them were the National Intelligence Council (NIC) officers for WMD proliferation and East Asia, both part of the ODNI. The CIA sent two witnesses, from its proliferation and North Korea–analysis offices. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the State Department, and the Department of Energy sent one witness each.
In addition to these 10 witnesses, other senior intelligence officials attended as backbenchers. There also was a gaggle of aides, handlers, and congressional liaison staffers. There were so many that they could not all fit into the hearing room.
The hearing seemed to go on forever, since the lead witness kept inviting all his colleagues to weigh in on every question asked by committee members. Some of the backbenchers spoke too. This became monotonous, since every witness (except for the one from DIA) parroted the same watered-down consensus view. Making this worse, the witnesses’ consensus statements were proven to be completely wrong a few months later.
This mob of intelligence officials spouting the same watered-down pablum exemplified why the reform of U.S. intelligence mandated by the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) has been an utter failure. Although IRTPA created the position of the director of national intelligence as a new official to oversee all U.S. intelligence agencies, to ensure that these agencies would cooperate and share information, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has developed into a huge additional layer of bureaucracy, with far too many officials, that has made American intelligence analysis and collection less efficient and more risk-averse.
This is in part due to blowback from 9/11 and Iraq War intelligence failures, but also is a typical situation for a 70-year-old, multi-billion-dollar bureaucracy that has become complex and complacent. As is true with many established government bureaucracies, political factors and fear of being wrong weigh heavily on the operations of U.S. intelligence agencies. While America still has the world’s best and most capable intelligence service, it has lost the “can-do” intrepid spirit of its predecessor, the heroic World War II-era Office of Strategic Services.
The ODNI has made this problem much worse — not just because it is an additional layer of stifling bureaucracy, but also because it has become a 17th intelligence agency, with its own intelligence analysts, thousands of employees, and a huge — and ever growing — budget.
In 2007, House Intelligence Committee members were so disturbed about the rapid growth of the ODNI bureaucracy that they approved, on a bipartisan basis, an amendment to the 2008 intelligence authorization bill to freeze the ODNI staff to the number working for it as of May 1, 2007. I drafted this amendment, which was co-sponsored by Congressmen Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) and Alcee Hastings (D., Fla.).
Hastings said at the time about this amendment:
We will not give you a blank check with which you could continue to grow a new bureaucracy before we know what you are doing with what you already have. A bigger bureaucracy does not make better intelligence.
Although Hastings was right, the Hastings/Rogers amendment was never implemented, since Congress did not pass an intelligence authorization bill that year. I hate to think how many times the ODNI staff has doubled since the House Intelligence Committee attempted to halt its growth in 2007.
The IRTPA reforms have hurt U.S. intelligence in other ways. The President’s Daily Brief (PDB), which used to be a lean and effective daily intelligence publication for the president produced by the CIA, has become an ODNI publication, weighed down with bureaucracy to make it “fair” so that all 17 intelligence organizations can participate and use it to publish articles justifying their budget requests to Congress.
The ODNI bureaucracy has also burdened intelligence agencies with unnecessary reports, regulations, and foreign travel by ODNI staff.
Aside from being an attempt to improve the sharing of information between intelligence agencies in the aftermath of the 9/11 intelligence failures, the ODNI also was created because some believed it is impossible for the CIA director to both manage the CIA and oversee the rest of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
I have long believed that these reasons are false. The CIA director, as the director of central intelligence (DCI), worked well for decades as the head of all U.S. intelligence agencies. The failure to share intelligence between U.S. intelligence agencies prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks could have been addressed without creating the DNI position and its huge and plodding bureaucracy. Moreover, intelligence agencies have failed to share crucial information despite the creation of the ODNI.
For example, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) issued a damning report in 2010 on how U.S. intelligence agencies failed to share information that could have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — the 2009 “underwear bomber” — from boarding a plane from Europe that he almost blew up over the city of Detroit. The report found that U.S. intelligence agencies had the information to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane to the United States but had failed to cooperate with each other and share intelligence. According to the report, “no one agency saw itself as being responsible” for assessing such threats. The report identified 14 specific failures by intelligence agencies which included a bureaucratic process for adding names to terror watch lists that was too complicated and too rigid to address quickly emerging terrorist threats.
Concerning the argument that the CIA director can’t simultaneously manage the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, if the president can manage the White House and the entire U.S. government, there’s no reason why we can’t have the CIA director in charge of his home agency and overseeing other U.S. intelligence agencies.
Eliminating the ODNI and rolling its duplicative organizations into the CIA would save at least $1 billion and could make U.S. intelligence more efficient and nimble. Such a move should include eliminating the huge number of redundant ODNI managers and officials such as those mentioned above.
More needs to be done to streamline U.S. intelligence and fix problems caused by earlier reforms and reorganizations.
For example, CIA director Brennan carried out a huge and controversial reorganization in 2015 that many critics believe created a confusing and bloated bureaucratic structure that will hurt long-term analysis and create security risks. This reorganization needs to be carefully reviewed by the next CIA director and possibly reversed.
There also are redundant units in multiple intelligence organizations that perform identical missions that should be streamlined. More of these crop up every year.
For example, U.S. intelligence agencies have increased their efforts to counter cyberwarfare over the last few years by creating large, separate organizations to address this issue. These include:
- The ODNI Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, created in 2015.
- The U.S. Cyber Command, created in 2009, to defend Department of Defense networks, systems and information, to defend the homeland against cyberattacks, and to provide support to military and contingency operations.
- The Department of Homeland Security National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, created in 2009, to monitor cyber threats across government agencies and critical infrastructure.
- The CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation, created in 2015.
There are many other examples of such duplication and redundancy, especially concerning counterterrorism.
To the greatest extent possible, these types of offices should be streamlined into a single inter-agency entity with one agency having the lead.
A reconstituted DCI should also take the lead in doing a better job of encouraging cooperation between intelligence agencies by pressing intelligence officers to take temporary assignments in other agencies. Having worked as an analyst with CIA and DIA, I know their analysis missions are very similar and would greatly benefit from closer collaboration, possibly by creating a joint CIA/DIA intelligence analyst service.
Managers and experts need to be brought in from outside the U.S. intelligence community to challenge the groupthink and analysis-by-committee that has gripped our intelligence agencies in the aftermath of the 9/11 and Iraq WMD intelligence failures. To deal with emerging security threats, we need more out-of-the-box and “competitive” analysis that provides policymakers with alternative assessments of global threats. There also is a great need for better strategic analysis of future threats.
U.S. intelligence agencies also need to improve their efforts to analysze and collect against new technological developments and challenges, including social media, big data, and hostile actors utilizing increasingly powerful encryption.
Outside managers and experts could also help counter the politicization of intelligence by intelligence officers who don’t like President Trump. This was a serious problem for previous Republican presidents. Recent leaks to the press by intelligence officers about Trump’s daily briefings suggest this problem has already resurfaced.
Implementing intelligence reforms to make U.S. intelligence agencies into the innovative and effective institution they once were will take strong leaders in top intelligence positions who will act independently and are not beholden to the intelligence community. These officials must have the full backing of the president.
President-elect Trump, by appointing Mike Pompeo as CIA director, General Mike Flynn as National Security advisor, and KT McFarland as deputy national security advisor, is off to an excellent start to implementing these kinds of intelligence reforms to make American intelligence great again.
Terror Experts ‘Very Concerned’ About Sen. Warren Aide and His Radical Mosque
December 13, 2016Terror Experts ‘Very Concerned’ About Sen. Warren Aide and His Radical Mosque, Counter Jihad, Paul Sperry, December 12, 2016
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she made an ill-advised appearance at a Boston mosque linked to several major terrorism cases at the request of an office aide who attends the radical mosque.
The Massachusetts Democrat said she agreed to speak Sunday at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center at the urging of staffer Hamza Abdelgany, who is a member of the mosque, which has graduated no fewer than 13 terrorists and recently was caught on video defending many of the terrorists, even after they were convicted in federal court.
Warren spoke before the congregation for several minutes chiefly to complain about “anti-Muslim hate” allegedly inspired by the election of GOP President-elect Donald Trump.
Charles Jacobs, founder of Boston-based Americans for Peace and Tolerance, told CJ that he is “very concerned” that a member of a mosque that supports and even raises money for the legal defense of known terrorists has such political clout. He said that Warren’s ill-considered visit bestowed undue legitimacy on ISB.
ISB operates two mosques: one in Roxbury, where the so-called “interfaith” event attended by Warren was held, and the other in Cambridge, where several terrorists and terrorist supporters have worshipped, including:
- Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev;
- Aafia Siddiqui, aka Lady al-Qaida, who raised money for the terror group in area mosques and is serving an 86-year federal sentence for trying to murder a US Army captain in Afghanistan, where she was captured with plans to carry out a chemical attack on New York City;
- ISB imam Abdullah Faaruuq, who was heard on tape urging Boston Muslims to “pick up the gun and the sword” to defend Siddiqui during her 2010 trial.
- Tarek Mehanna, who in 2012 got 17 years in federal prison for conspiring to use automatic weapons to murder shoppers in a suburban Boston mall, as well as for conspiring to aid Al Qaeda;
- Ahmad Abousamra, an indicted terrorist co-conspirator of Mehanna who fled to Syria in 2006 where he resurfaced as a top ISIS propagandist and was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list in 2013, where he remains today.
- ISB congregant Rezwan Ferdaus, who in 2012 got 17 years in federal prison for plotting to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with remote-controlled airplane bombs.
- ISB major donor Oussama Ziade, who was indicted in 2009 for dealing with terrorist funds and is now a fugitive living in Lebanon.
- ISB co-founder Abduraham Alamoudi, who was sentenced in 2004 to 23 years in prison for plotting terrorism and identified by the US government as a top Muslim Brotherhood figure as well as a key al-Qaida fundraiser in America.
- ISB founding trustee Yusuf Qaradawi, who was placed on the US terror watchlist after calling for violent jihad against US troops in Iraq and is currently the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant on charges of incitement to murder.
- Jamal Badawi, another former trustee who in 2007 was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a plan to funnel more than $12 million to Palestinian suicide bombers.
ISB leadership also includes Abdul-Malik Merchant, an associate imam who recently was forced to apologize to the Jewish community for posting anti-Semitic posts on social media.
ISB member Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was caught on surveillance videotape planting a bomb along the Boston Marathon route, became an angry jihadist after joining the mosque. According to his ex-girlfriend, “One minute he was a normal guy, the next minute he is watching these crazy Muslim videos.”
In 2011, ISB hosted an event in support of no fewer than 22 terrorists who were convicted of providing material support for al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Jihad and Pakistani terrorist groups — including Siddiqui, Alamoudi and Mehanna. During the event, which was caught on video, relatives of the terrorists bashed the FBI, the Justice Department and the US government; and at least one speaker called for violent jihad against the US.
Still, Warren stood where they stood and bashed the president-elect.
“I am very concerned about how Donald trump is beginning to define his administration with the people he personally is picking to lead this country,” Warren said, while claiming that “since the election attacks on racial and religious groups have skyrocketed.”
“Now is a time when we must be willing to say loud and clear there is no room for bigotry anywhere in the United States of America — none,” she said. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and we will fight back against discrimination whenever and wherever it occurs.”
Six prominent religious leaders fired off a letter criticizing Warren for agreeing to appear at the mosque, arguing she provided “political cover to one of the most intolerant jihadist mosques in America.”
Warren was invited by ISB member Hamza Abdelgany, a staff assistant working out of Warren’s Quincy, Mass., office. Abdelgany was involved with the Muslim Students Association while attending the University of Massachusetts at Boston. The US government says MSA is a front group for the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which supports violent jihad and conspires to one day bring the US and other Western nations under Islamic rule.
“The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt … Its ultimate goal is the creation of a global Islamic State governed by Sharia law,” U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks said in a 2008 court filing related to a major terrorism case. “Muslim Brotherhood members first migrated to the United States in the 1960s, where they began their grassroots work on campuses through an organization called the Muslim Students Association.”
ISB is run by the Muslim American Society, a known Muslim Brotherhood front group which also runs the so-called “9/11 mosque” in the Washington area, Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center.
Ilya Feoktistov, director of research for Americans for Peace and Tolerance, said that by ignoring ISB’s well-documented ties to terrorists, Warren is serving as an “enabler” of jihad.
Trying to overturn a free and fair election
December 13, 2016Trying to overturn a free and fair election, Washington Times,
The world has turned itself upside down. Only yesterday the liberals and the left (the “progressives,” as they want to be called) regarded the CIA as the locus of evil, the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, forever poisoning gentle minds with a diet of conspiracy and tall tale.
In those gloomy days of the Cold War, where every day was seasoned with a sharp wind and a cold rain, it was the Democratic intellectuals who were forever chiding the rest of us that the Soviet Union was not so bad, the Russians just wanted to be understood and maybe deserved an occasional cuddle. It was the Republicans and other conservatives who were mindless rubes who imagined there was a mad Russian under everybody’s bed.
Now the CIA, in the liberal/left’s fevered dreams, is the last bulwark of the republic, the last remaining hope to turn the 2016 election result on its head and deprive Donald Trump of the victory he won. The Russians, it now turns out, are just as bad as the conservatives said they were.
President Obama, who mocked Mitt Romney four years ago for suggesting that Russia and Vladimir Putin was America’s No. 1 enemy, now says it was Mr. Romney who was smart and got it right four years ago. The president himself, in his telling, is the man dumber than a cypress stump.
The president, at last awake and paying attention to Russian cyber warfare, wants answers, and by noon on Jan. 20. He can then only dine out on the answers, because he won’t have any more authority to do anything about them than the cat.
Desperation pursues despair, and the Democrats are stumbling from inanity to insanity in search of a way to block Donald Trump’s path to the White House. Hilary Clinton’s remnant of a campaign has endorsed an attempt by a handful of members of the Electoral College — 9 Democrats and a rogue Republican — to get the “intelligence briefing” they think might derail next Monday’s scheduled day for the members of the Electoral College to vote for president, 306 of whom are honor bound to vote for the Donald. That’s 36 votes more than he needs.
“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” John Podesta said Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.
“Each day our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump. Despite our protestations this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in our campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”
What should distress every American is the way the left, the liberals, the progressives and their handmaidens in the press have discarded reasonable conversation to try out every absurd alarm, one after the other, to see whether one could stick, to undermine and undercut the results of what everyone agrees was a free and fair election on Nov. 8. None has worked. More than a month later, the republic stands.
Hysteria now threatens to become insanity. Rep. Jim Hines of Connecticut, a Democrat, says it came to him in the night, as if Marley’s ghost was rattling his chains at the bedside, “that this man is not only unqualified to be president, he’s a danger to the republic. I do think the Electoral College should choose someone other than Donald Trump to be president. That will lead to a fascinating legal issue, but I would rather have a legal issue, a complicated legal problem, than to find out the White House was now the Kremlin’s chief ally.”
Accusing a president-elect of treason, of plotting with the enemy against his country, and with no evidence at all, is something that even a congressman from Connecticut should understand is beyond the limits of rational and decent political debate. Alas, it’s par for the course on the left this season.
The sudden deep concern by President Obama and the Democrats about Russia and cyber warfare, is a bit rich. The Washington Post, which continues so deep in denial that its side lost the election that it may never find the way to the next stage of grief, hangs its survival on the conclusion of the intelligence agencies — which, to put it charitably, have a dismal record of finding out what’s going on anywhere.
A competent president and a responsible “intelligence community” would have done something about the Russians and their hackers a long time ago. Whining doesn’t work.
10 Ways the CIA’s ‘Russian Hacking’ Story is Left-Wing ‘Fake News’
December 12, 201610 Ways the CIA’s ‘Russian Hacking’ Story is Left-Wing ‘Fake News’, Breitbart, Joel B. Pollak, December 12, 2016
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged to support a congressional investigation into whether Russian hacking affected the 2016 election. Republicans have nothing to fear from such an investigation, because they won the election fair and square.
No, Russia is not the friend that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent several years pretending it was. But the idea that Russian hackers coronated Trump is only the latest left-wing opiate — after white supremacists and “fake news” — designed to dull the pain of electoral defeat, and postpone the reckoning that must occur if Democrats are to pose a significant threat as an opposition party at any time in the near future.
Here are just ten of the reasons the “Russian hacking” story is a sham — a left-wing twist on the red-baiting McCarthyism of the 1950s.
1. There is actually no new information leading the CIA to its conclusion. The New York Times reports: “The C.I.A.’s conclusion does not appear to be the product of specific new intelligence obtained since the election, several American officials, including some who had read the agency’s briefing, said on Sunday. Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence — evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments — that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome.” In other words, someone only decided after Trump won that it the accusation was worth making.
2. The “evidence” that the CIA has gathered is inconclusive. The FBI also disagrees with some of the CIA’s conclusions about Russia’s motives. “While lawmakers were seemingly united on the need to present a strong bipartisan response, the FBI and CIA gave lawmakers differing accounts on Russia’s motives, according to The Post,” The Hill reported on Sunday.
3. The CIA is not making public claims that Russia hacked the election. Several CIA veterans, in fact, have urged caution about the leaked reports. As Newsweek reports: “‘I am not saying that I don’t think Russia did this,’ Nada Bakos, a top former CIA counterterrorism officer tells Newsweek, in a typical comment. ‘My main concern is that we will rush to judgment. The analysis needs to be cohesive and done the right way.’” Thus far there is not even a clear idea what the CIA’s conclusions are.
4. Despite left-wing “fake news,” there is no evidence Russian hackers actually distorted the voting process. The most that the CIA is alleging is that the Russians may have helped hack of the Democratic National Committee emails, as well as (possibly) the emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chaiman John Podesta. There is zero evidence Russian hackers messed with voting. Ironically, Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount has eliminated any doubt about the integrity of the results.
5. The Obama administration has a history of manipulating intelligence for political gain. The most under-reported scandal of Obama’s presidency was the CENTCOM scandal, in which it emerged that “senior U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) leaders manipulated intelligence assessments in 2014 and 2015 to make it appear that President Barack Obama is winning the war against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).” There is even more reason to doubt the truth of a selective leak about the election.
6. Julian Assange and Wikileaks have vigorously denied that the Russians were involved in Wikileaks’ disclosures. Of the Democratic National Committee emails, Assange said: “That is the circumstantial evidence that some Russian, or someone who wanted to make them look like a Russian, was involved, with these other media organisations. That is not the case for the material that we released.” Assange made similar denials about the Podesta email leaks later in the election.
7. The fact that the Russians might constantly be trying to hack U.S. systems, and might even specifically have targeted the election, does not prove that they succeeded. Nor does it prove that they tipped the election to Trump even if they had some effect. As pollster Frank Luntz tweeted: “Did Russia also hack Hillary’s campaign calendar and delete all her stops in rural Wisconsin, Penn., and Michigan?” Hillary Clinton lost the election for reasons entirely of her own making.
8. Foreign interference in elections is nothing new — and the Obama administration is a prime culprit. In 2015, the Obama administration made a strenuous and not-terribly-well-hidden effort to swing the Israeli elections toward the opposition and away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The State Department gave $300,000 to a “pro-peace” Israeli group, which then paid political activists whose goal was to unseat Netanyahu. In 1984, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) actually asked for Soviet help. Russian efforts to intervene would be bad, but not unique, either for Russia or for the U.S.
9. What would the consequences of allowing undue Russian influence in our elections be, exactly? Would we yield primacy in Eastern Europe to Vladimir Putin? Would we give up our plans for missile defense? Would we make deep unilateral cuts in our nuclear arsenal in exchange for flimsy concessions ? Would we tolerate a Russian land invasion of a friendly, pro-Western country? Would we cede the Middle East to Russian hegemony? Because Hillary Clinton and Obama already did that.
10. Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation for the “Russian hacking” story is that it is “fake news” that suits the left-wing media. It is not unknown for Russia to use false propaganda to affect public opinion in foreign countries. Nor is it unknown for the U.S. media to use bias, “fake news,” and outright lies to shift public opinion in this country. The current focus on Russian “hacking,” based on no new evidence and — again — zero evidence of tampering with the voting process.
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments